


Rubik's

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On fitting in and trusting one's colleagues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rubik's

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Squot

 

 

Gwen thinks about Suzie more than she wants to.

It's not hate. That would be too easy, simple. Too childish. It's not quite pain, though she can never hear the woman's name without thinking of the blunt slug of metal sinking into her head and that terrible tremor of knowledge that she will die.

There's Suzie's laughter in her ears when she's afraid because she remembers the gunshots and looking at the crisp blue sky and the panic-claustrophobia of _no way out_ as the blackness fogged into her mind.

Suzie's face reflected on her desk each morning, eyes shining like stars, her smile a painful illusion.

And then there are Suzie's words falling like lead weights. Better. Better, better, _better_. But all the things that mark them apart mark Suzie as brilliant.

But it's the glove that frightens her most of all because it connects them, and it ended _her_.

Late nights, when the Hub's quiet and the pterodactyl's been allowed out to feed (sheep, not people, she's been reassured time and again) Jack talks to her and she listens, nods, smiles as expected, wondering all the time if he spoke to his former second-in-command the same way. She makes them coffee because Ianto's gone home for the night. She watches him sip at it and knows he's thinking too hot/cold/bitter/sweet.

-

He's still human (she likes to think). All human (looks human, feels human, tastes human) and people have come back from the dead before (according to the UNIT files, half of which she doesn't believe, half she doesn't want to.)

Sometimes she wakes up, just a little lost, and her head's on his chest and his heart is beating. The Hub's a cold place and she dresses quickly, practicing excuses in her head.

-

Gwen wonders if Suzie drank coffee. Whether she preferred Chinese or Indian. Whether the reason they always have leftover margarita is because that's what she used to eat and no-one bothers to change the order. (Maybe that's their idea of a memorial, because God knows they never _talk_ about her.)

She wonders how long Suzie's boxes will sit, rotting, forgotten. She thinks of her own life in boxes: family, work, Torchwood, real life, Jack, Owen, Rhys. Plays games about what she would do if she ran away and how far she could get before they found her. She wonders if Suzie did that too, if that was what drove her over the edge. (Because it wasn't just the glove; it couldn't be just the glove: that's her mantra of choice when feeling as though she's teetering on a cliff.)

If this is really her life, she wants a better tailor; someone to cut the secrets a little, hem the trust. Someone who knows what the shape of the thing is meant to be.

-

So they don't talk about her, not unless they absolutely have to. The silences are black gulfs, opening up to swallow her curiosity whole. She searches on the computers instead, pretends not to feel Tosh watching over her shoulder.

"Did you ever...?" she asks, one night, half-eaten pizza and flat coke sitting forgotten on the desk in-between them. "With Suzie, I mean?"

Jack just looks at her and she thinks he might laugh but the moments tick by and the joke's over.

"You people don't know how to make pepperoni," he says.

Conversation over. She doesn't go home that night either, and it's because of work she tells Rhys (good Rhys, trusting Rhys) and there's a part of her that's beginning to believe that's true.

"You don't belong here, Captain Jack Harkness," she mouths wordlessly. She examines his face, holding her breath, and tries to see what secrets he lets slip as he sleeps.

-

It's stupid. It's a game. There're are a hundred different places to fuck in the Hub and they're not even halfway through yet.

Sooner or later, they reach the mortuary.

It should be...something. It's not. It's Gwen holding him against her as she leans back with only thin metal between her and stone cold dead corpses. A handle bites into her back and she doesn't care. Her hands move faster. His shirt is off, his zip undone, and she lets him push her skirt up around her waist.

His lips are on her neck, smooth and tactile. And she throws her head back, letting it hit the wall with a dull metallic clang.

When she laughs (quietly, a giggle) he doesn't ask why.

-

Suzie. Suzette. Crepe. Sweet. Sugar. Spice. Word association, for the distraction. To think of something else.

Rhys is asleep already, and she slips in beside him thinking about Weevils and fairies and how to kill things that aren't human (cause that's okay).

She calls in sick the next day. (Hangs up when Jack starts explaining that you don't _get_ sick days when you work for Torchwood.) It's partly for Rhys, mostly for her. If the job gets inside her head then she wants to make sure she's got home right along in there with it, and she doesn't want to give up her life for impossible dreams.

The thing she tries to remember is that when you end up murdering innocent people something somewhere has gone very, very wrong. And all the other stuff, all the clever things you know how to do don't really mean very much anymore.

When she stops trying to fit in around everything else, she finds it easier to listen to Jack when he needs to confess. When she stops sleeping with him, she finds it easier to talk to Rhys when she needs someone to talk to, and it doesn't matter that she can't tell him the details and that what she's saying doesn't really make much sense, because she's talking and he's listening and it's better like this.

She thinks about Suzie and, on her better days, wishes she had found someone who could (without the lies and the drugs and the memory loss) listen to her too.

She wishes Suzie had found someone that she could trust.

 

 

 


End file.
